The present invention relates to a slide rail arrangement for a vehicle seat, comprising an elongated guide rail having at least two longitudinal parallel grooves for roller bodies and being arranged to be fixed relative to a vehicle floor, and a slide rail, which has an inverted U-profile, spans over the guide rail and has corresponding facing parallel grooves for the roller bodies as well as fastener members for fixing the slide rail relative to a seat frame.
Slide rail arrangements of this type are used for vehicle seats in practically all types of motor vehicles from lightweight passenger cars to heavy construction machines, and are mass-produced in large numbers in various more or less typical standard designs. It has proved to be the case that after a certain period of use, especially in construction machines and other implements driven on uneven surfaces, that clearance is created between the guide rail and the slide rail. This clearance is in many cases due to the fact that the upside down U-profile of the slide rail is widened somewhat under the load and bending moment which it is subjected to by the weight of the seat and the driver during operation. One method of solving this problem is of course to increase the dimensions of the components in the slide rail arrangement, but in this case it is necessary to deviate from the mass-produced standard designs, and this is an expensive solution, since the volumes involved are substantially smaller for this type of vehicle than for common passenger cars and trucks.
The purpose of the present invention is to achieve, for a slide rail arrangement of the type described by way of introduction, a simple and inexpensive solution making it possible to use existing slide rail arrangements of standard design, also in vehicles such as constaction machines and the like, and minimize the risk of play arising after a period of use.
This is achieved according to the invention by virtue of the fact that upside down U-shaped reinforcing clamps spanning over the slide rail in the area of at least a plurality of fastening members.
In a commonly occurring slide rail arrangement of the type described, the fastening members are two screws disposed in holes in the slide rail in the vicinity of its two ends. It has been shown that the bending-out of the U-profile occurs in the vicinity of these screws, and by merely arranging short simple reinforcing clamps near these screws, the same result can be achieved as making the entire slide rail heavier. In a simple and inexpensive embodiment, each clamp is made with a bore which fits the fasted screw so that each clamp is merely slipped over the respective screw and is clamped securely to the seat frame when the slide rail is screwed onto it.